Ratings Key

★★★★ = Excellent. The best the genre has to offer.★★★1/2 = Very Good. Perhaps not "perfect," but undoubtedly a must-see.★★★ = Good. Accomplishes what it sets out to do and does it well.★★1/2 = Fair. Clearly flawed and nothing spectacular, but competently made. OK entertainment.★★ = Mediocre. Either highly uneven or by-the-numbers and uninspired.★1/2 = Bad. Very little to recommend.★ = Very Bad. An absolute chore to sit through.NO STARS! = Abysmal. Unwatchable dreck that isn't even bad-movie amusing.SBIG = So Bad It's Good. Technically awful movies with massive entertainment value.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Death Faces (1988)

...aka: Beyond Reality

...aka: Death Faces IV

...aka: Dying: Last Seconds of Life

Directed by:

Victoria Bloodhart

Time for more gross-out "thrills." Well, not exactly... Someone at a party I was at eventually had to pop this one out because it was making everyone sick. Several shots of Jose Cuervo didn't even help. I did get to see a pus-infected eyeball, experimental brain surgery, corpse burning and cannibalism, then later on basically just fast-forwarded through the rest of the boring stock footage. It's cheap-looking, grainy and sometimes gross, of course, but this tape and everything spawned from it is an elaborate rip-off that's been making a lot of money for some con artist for almost twenty years now. Understandably, no one involved used their actual names ("Victoria Bloodhart" ... "Damien B. Gravenhorse" ... "Professor Bizarro Blackstone" ... give me a break), so I don't even have anyone to single out and chastise. It was released many times under many different titles and many people were tricked into renting this out or even buying it more than once, especially since it was released once as DEATH FACES and then later as the "sequel" DEATH FACES IV, when in fact it's the exact same film! The version released by Fame Entertainment (under the title BEYOND REALITY) has a little newly added footage. There was also a companion tape that re-used some of the same footage called BEYOND REALITY II, which itself was released a second time as DYING: LAST SECONDS OF LIFE PART II, a "sequel" to yet another of DEATH FACES's alternate titles! More footage from this was even recycled in BANNED FROM FACEZ 2000, PART TWO, as well as other tapes. Blah. These things suck!

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